


Sonder

by bookwyrmling



Series: Ineffable [2]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:45:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6711250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling/pseuds/bookwyrmling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonder

Echizen Ryoma had earned the nickname the Prince of Tennis while growing up in America. By the time he was twelve, he had already earned four consecutive titles in the American Junior Tennis circuit. He had fans and a few companies were beginning to follow him as a possible future sponsorship. The USTA was pressing for him to join ITF and go international. His old man would approve of course, because it meant Ryoma facing stronger opponents and getting closer to finally being able to play the Samurai on equal grounds until, eventually, Ryoma stood at the top and he was not the Prince anymore, but the King or the Emperor or God of Tennis. Everything that happened, everyone he met, was a stepping stone meant for his own use, advancement and entertainment.

Echizen Ryoma did not, therefore, understand why his father refused the recommendation to join the ITF and the international junior tennis circuit. Not only that, but the old man moved the family to Japan. Japan! And not just for the usual visits, but to stay! While his father had come from Japan and while Nishikori Kei and Kurumu-Date Kimiko, two young tennis stars rising through the world rankings, were from Japan and while it was his parents’ home country, it was still Japan. What had the island nation offered to international tennis other than that meager handful? How could his tennis possibly improve in some standard school club at even half the level it had been doing in America or a quarter of what it could be doing if he were to go international?

But Japan proves to have far more talented players than the twelve-year old could have ever realized. He goes there, he plays, he grows and evolves both as a human and as a tennis player. He becomes a pillar and takes his school’s club team all the way to the top of Japan’s Middle School tennis. He becomes a pillar by standing at each member’s side and helping them stand up again when they fall. People are not his stepping stones. The universe does not revolve around him. He fights. He makes friends and rivals and enemies. He even finds one person that makes his breath quicken and his heart pound in his chest whenever he thinks about him. Echizen Ryoma is quite sure that he will never find a game of tennis that will match up to his games with buchou, but buchou has taught him to always face the opponent directly in front of him.

So Ryoma does just that and leaves when his father decides it is time to go back to America and he does his best to live up to what he knows his senpai and buchou expect of him, but the invitation to Japan’s U-17 Camp is the best news he has had since his National’s victory.

Echizen Ryoma is not quite sure what he expected, but he knows it isn’t this. While he enjoys the chance to face off against the strong players he battled to get to Nationals, he misses his team and Seigaku. He misses running around the courts twenty times with Inui’s juice driving him faster and faster. He misses smash training against Fuji’s counters and counter training against Kawamura’s burning mode and Momoshiro’s Super Dunk Special.

Echizen Ryoma had expected everyone to be waiting for him just as they had been before.

But while everyone is glad to see him and Atobe and Sanada and Yukimura poke and prod for future matches to test their current strength against his own, while Momoshiro and Kikumaru hang all over him and even Kintaro begs and pleads for matches, it’s different.

There is no buchou or fukubuchou because Seigaku is not a team, but part of a larger one.

Echizen Ryoma cannot imagine even calling Tezuka senpai.

The Golden Pair is split up and Seigaku’s team spreads out and mingles into a homogeneous combination with the rest of the middle schoolers and even the high schoolers.

When Ryoma learns that Tezuka is leaving for Germany, his gut twists. The person who taught him what it was to play tennis, to enjoy tennis and to see others as the people they were teaches him another lesson with his departure.

Everyone is still who they were before, but everything is completely different. They have grown and continued their lives without him. They will continue to grow and continue their lives without him. Their lives might have touched once, or twice, but for as much as some of these people have impacted his life, as much as he hopes he might have impacted theirs, they will all separate and continue on all the same and meeting him will have been no different than bumping into a stranger’s shoulder on a crowded sidewalk in the long run. So Ryoma throws his chance at the camp to be able to pay back Tokugawa and returns to America.

With any luck, after he has grown and the others have grown, they can meet up and play again.

**Author's Note:**

> Ineffable is a series of Pillar-centric one-shots spanning the Prince of Tennis's timeline (including pre- and post-manga), with each one-shot taking its prompt from words off of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a blog run by a linguist whose goal it was to create words to describe sensations, emotions or moments for which words do not exist. This is still an in-progress project, so updates will be slow. Please keep in mind chapters will not be in temporal order. Some may come earlier or later than chapters they are posted after or may span long periods of time. Each chapter is a stand-alone one-shot, but these one-shots all exist in the same timeline.


End file.
